Art in the marketplace

One of the most difficult things about creating pieces for the store is balancing artistic interests with commercial ones. Unless you have a sizable trust fund or the ability to go for months without eating, you have to be concerned about making items that people will buy. The trick is to make pieces that you actually want to make that people will buy. It has taken me a long time to figure this out. One of the ways to address this commercial/artistic tension is to look to the traditional decorative arts for inspiration. These contain design elements that have stood the test of time, and don't usually involve a decorative piece with an image of a dog sitting on a pumpkin howling at the moon with the caption "Happy HOWL-oween!" for example.

One such timeless motif is the birds-and-vine chinoiserie style, which has the added appeal of being a trend right now. Hopefully it won't catch on at the level of the toile craze of the early part of this decade. I knew we had reached a level of insanity with that look when I saw women actually wearing capri pants made out of toile. Very strange to see women wearing upholstery patterns as clothing, like Scarlett O'Haras for the 21st century except not nearly as attractive as their fictional counterpart. Anyway, the point is that I painted the tables in the above photograph in the chinoiserie style, which I find challenging artistically and also am happy with at a commercial level. I had just brought the tables into the shop when they were purchased by Francesca, also known as motherblogger. She has a great sense of design and I was very glad to know they were going to go live with her.

I've also been making these composite images with paint and old books. I've created images on boxes out of these elements but this is the first canvas I've done. Obviously, it is not breaking new ground artistically but it is a fun design nonetheless.

Summer is winding down. The small upright dot in front of the boat is my 3-year-old son getting in some beach time before he heads to work with me. The only good aspect of the end of summer is the prospect of Fall - the only season more beautiful than summer on Cape Ann...

Visit from Katy Elliott

Katy Elliott stopped by the store this week. She posted some photos on her blog - be sure to check it out! She has worked for several shelter magazines and has an editor's eye for good design, so it was nice to have her in Rockport for the afternoon to see that our town has something to offer besides t-shirts (not that there is anything wrong with t-shirts - it's just that we have so very many, many of them).
www.katyelliott.com

For the last few months I've been staring at my kitchen wall. No, I'm not crazy - at least not to my knowledge - it's more that I'm very happy with the juxtaposition of our red vintage wall phone against our kitchen wall, painted the color of asparagus. Not canned asparagus, mind you, but fresh asparagus, perhaps artfully steamed in a bamboo contraption. Our home's color scheme is a very basic black, white and beige. This includes our kitchen, except for what is fashionably called an accent wall. It provides a little respite for the eyes, a spot of color in a sea of greige textures. So today's post is a tribute to our wall phone. Which also actually functions, as an added bonus. Though my happiness with the tableau the phone presents is often undermined by actually using the phone, tethered to the wall as I often am in a conversation I would rather not be having.

What's (not so) New in the Shop

The thing about buying vintage is that, along with the piece itself, you are buying a bit of history. A vintage lamp has lived its own life, or several lives, long before coming into yours. Of course, old stuff is not for everyone. Not for new-house people, for instance. I was watching a t.v. show a few days ago in which the viewer follows the adventures of a couple looking for a house to buy. My husband, by the by, thinks I'm slightly nuts for spending a half-hour watching complete strangers tour houses, but it's one of those things with an appeal that you just can't explain to people for whom watching such a show would be akin to being poked in the eye. Anyway, this home-buyer was insistent on only looking at new builds. The prospect of taking a bath in a tub in which another human being had already bathed was so repulsive she wouldn't even consider it. Wow. She, and all her fellow lovers of the newly-manufactured, will clearly never be a customer of this store, but that just leaves more old stuff for the rest of us. Incidentally, the venerable NY Times has officially recognized buying vintage as a bona fide trend. You can read about it and view a slideshow here - very interesting to see what yard sale & flea market decorating looks like when maneuvered by the hands of the urbane.

I have a couple of new old charts in the store this week. One of these charts features geographical terms with great graphics. You can even write on it & clean it off with a wax pencil.

The other chart features botanical terms. I have a detailed photo of it here, highlighting Boston Ivy in honor of the Massachusetts connection.


An aqua bureau for a shot of summer color year-round.